Orange Shirt Guy

     "Are you saying that God blew himself to bits and we're what's left?" I asked.

     "Not exactly," he replied.

     "Then what?"

     "The debris consists of two things.  First, there are the smallest elements of matter, many levels below the smallest things scientists have identified."

     "Smaller than quarks?  I don't know what a quark is, but I think it's small."

     "Everything is made of some other thing.  And those things in turn are made of other things.  Over the next hundred years, scientists will uncover layer after layer of building blocks, each smaller than the last.  At each layer the differences between types of matter will be fewer.  At the lowest layer everything is exactly the same.  Matter is uniform.  Those are the bits of God."

     "What's the second part of the debris?" I asked.

     "Probability."

Adams, S. (2004). God's Debris - A Thought Experiment.  Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing.

 

"Dearest family," Wandrey reported from Germany on April 6, 1945, "It's midnight and the church bell in the village is toiling; it sounds so mournful.  At the moment, I'm sitting here alone with Sammy our only patient."  Wandrey became especially fond of Sammy, whom she described as a "young, handsome, black-haired, married, Italian-American enlisted infantryman [with] an angelic singing voice."  Fragments from a German grenade had ripped through his chest, legs, skull, and right arm, and there was not chance he would survive.  The next day, an anguished Wandrey wrote home after Sammy succumbed to his injuries.

  4-7-45

Dearest family,

Despite Sammy's desperate battle to live, he slipped away just as morning broke.  It broke my heart.  Desperately tired, hungry, and sick of the misery and futility of war, I wept uncontrollably, my tears falling on poor Sammy's bandaged remains.  Later this morning, our long overdue ambulance came to retrieve us.  I couldn't bear to leave Sammy; I sat on the ambulance floor next to his litter and held his corpse as we bounced over the pockmarked roads on his last trip to Graves Registration.  When he died, part of me died too.  His magnificent singing voice was stilled forever but 'til the end of my days, I will still hear him say, "Nurse, you have a smile like a whooooole field of sunflowers."

    So sadly, June.

Carroll, A. (Ed.).  (2001). War Letters.  New York: Scribner.  link.

A lot of 9/11 stories out there yesterday.  Here is something that I wrote a couple of years ago today.

And here is an embedded link of Brian Unger and David Letterman - the last 40 seconds hit the nail squarely on the head.

     I felt sorry for the geezer, who seemed like a nice fellow.  We left him standing in a cloud of dust thrown back by our prop, scratching his head and feeling quite

useless.  Kern opened up the throttle 30 feet from the runway. We skidded onto

the centerline, popped into the air and turned west at 200 feet, hauling ass for Indiana.  It was the swiftest aircraft refueling in history.  We were in and out of Columbus in eight minutes.

     We leveled off relatively high, at 5,000 feet, to get as long a view of the country beneath us as we could in the receding light.  Maybe, just barely, we could make Indiana. Buck, R. (1997). Flight of Passage.  New York: Huperion. (Link)

Writing and Journaling brings me peace; writing with a goal is a double victory - Following is something that I've mashed together for September's Write Away Contest at Scribbit:

Her hair would be brown - of this I was pretty sure although I could get a glimpse only every minute or so.  During the next push, I confirmed Brown - and a headful of it.

Throughout my life, I've always been relatively well connected to moments in time via photographs, smells, and music - I've always known and been aware that those three items will instantly transport me back in time to a specific moment.

The soccer picture will tell what occurred on the field, but I know what was happening in my personal life, the smell of freshly cut grass brings to mind the annual new beginning, and music brings me back to the loves in my life.

But Colors? Colors seemed to be just a back drop - until I thought more about it.

Royal Blue and Gold were my team's first colors - it was Junior High School back in Noblesville - we were the Miller Mites and dammit, we were No. 1.  Wearing Royal Blue and Gold, we rode the bus back through the town square sure that everyone already knew of our championship in Junior High Cross Country.  And if they didn't know of our recent victory, surely the single digits out the bus' window and our chanting "We're No. 1!" would cleanse them of their temporary ignorance.

High School brought the most distinguished colors on the planet - not just Black and Gold, but Black and Old Gold (there is a huge difference - just ask any Miller or any Boilermaker). Brenda, High School Sectionals, Miller Combat (male cheerleaders with a teenager's non-conformist attitude), the senior bench are all painted with Black and Old Gold.

After a year off from High School Black and Old Gold, it was back to Black and Old Gold - this time of Purdue.

At this point in my life came blue - not royal, cerulean, navy, or sea; but beautiful blue - her eyes were amazing.  The local DMV agrees that they are blue - just blue. But to look at them from a distance of six inches, I know better.  They are blue modified by the many facets that a well cut stone might have.  They are the blue that can look at me and provide love and support just as easily as scorn and disdain. 

I don't necessarily even like blue eyes (chestnut brown are my favorite) but somehow, someway these blue ones entered my life and have to this date refused to leave.

There have been other eyes as well - the hazel of my son's and of a great friend's; the dark brown and brown-blue mix of my remaining kids.

There have been other colors as well. . . 

Last winter, I easily recall hearing the screams of my name, rushing to the house, and seeing the red seeping between my wife's fingers while holding my son's head.  A little later that week there was also the (well) blood-red dripping from my other son's inner ear (Currently, I can't recall the third trip to the ER that month, but there probably was one).

Purple provides the greatest pain - the purple of a funeral procession. No matter if it is one's father or the brother of an old love: 

---

What is the balance between life and death?  It just doesn't seem to equate.

The death of a parent or a friend, or a spouse, or a sibling is the loss of years of memories, of shared thoughts, of confidences, hell, even of fights.  But the loss of a loved one is the loss of a known, of a trusted entity, the loss of someone that provided . . . love . . . back. 

But the creation of a life.  It does not fill any of the above . . . not anytime soon anyway.

The loss of one's friend, brother or sister is a quick, drastic, and seemingly unfair grab - emptying a part of one's heart.  A part that took a long time to fill.

Filled with daily deposits . . . day after day . . . sometimes to over filling.

Maybe there is the circle, no an upward spiral of life . . . day upon day of small, but consistent deposits - ever increasing until one day when death grabs a chunk of it back -- a seemingly, excessively large and painful chunk of it.

After a few days and many stories, we realize how many, many deposits were made.  And though Time's unrelenting and unceasing cousin Death has taken a large (and all future) deposits; we know that we are still richer, that it was fun, that it was lucky, that we were amazingly fortunate.

We know that the balancing birth and young lives will begin to make their deposits.

And we know that someday, it won't hurt so damn much.

------

Her hair is now nearly ten years old and it is indeed brown.  Her mother confirmed this with me on that date after many hours of her pushing.  Ten years later, Brown - a Wet Brown - takes me back to Trenton,  New Jersey Mercer Medical Center Room 321 and a beautiful, blue day with small puffy cumulus clouds and a breezy high of about 65 degrees.  Brown.

Brother and Sister up the corridor of the local school. I used to think of this place as bland and (well) dull.  Learning of the people that work here have increased the vibrance of the place.

I love this picture.  There are a couple connections going on.  The girl on the left is completely connected with the girl on the right's shenanigans while the girl on the right is connected with the photographer.